In our last post, we wrote about the first three of the six new "conceptual senses" drawn from Daniel H. Pink's "A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future." In his inventive book, Pink argues that the dominance of logical, left-brain thinkers has given way to the Conceptual Age, a realm of creativity, inspiration and invention. For those who missed it, the first three senses are design, story and symphony. This article takes a look at the next three -- empathy, play and meaning -- and how each one guides the best emails from the most successful …

If retailers are feeling the pinch these days, imagine how much harder that pinch feels to charities. It can be argued that people need to continue buying goods even in a downturn, but charitable giving is always voluntary, and many families and foundations have felt the need to cut down on donations. To their credit, some of the country's top nonprofit organizations are doing an outstanding job of keeping donors engaged through eCRM. I selected five popular nonprofits to follow, based on Charity Navigator's monthly list of "most frequently reviewed" charities. Here is a short review of what these nonprofits …

One of the most overlooked aspects of many email marketers' programs is the unsubscribe process. How well you approach this process, however, can greatly affect your brand's reputation, email deliverability and list churn.

To build on my colleagues' positions in previous postings, social media is eroding email's social use in spite of its reliance on the medium and desperate claims that these two mediums can exist symbiotically in their current forms. If you're a B2B marketer you can skip reading the rest of this -- because I have yet to see LinkedIn and the like encroach on email's power in the business world. However, consumer marketers better pay attention, because your ability to achieve the same ROI year over year with email is going to be turned on its side.

As was made clear by the 2008 inductees into the Oopsy Hall of Fame, it's incredibly difficult to avoid making at least small slip-ups and mistakes in the fast-paced world of email marketing -- even for the largest retailers. However, as cringe-inducing as many of those oopsies are, most do not rise to the level of requiring an apology email. For those that do, there is a set of best practices worth noting. Here are seven tips for a graceful recovery.

Focus on your company's strongest assets -- your existing customer list. It often plays second fiddle next to acquiring new customers, but it shouldn't.

While skipping over commercials last night on the DVR, I found myself stopping at specific Apple commercials - specifically the iPhone Application ads. I couldn't help but draw the parallel between the ads flying by me on the TV and the myriad of email subject lines I skim each day in my inbox. So why did the Apple ads make me pause the DVR, rewind and watch? Can we apply the same motivation to opening specific emails in an otherwise cluttered inbox?

Twice this month, I had the opportunity to review and provide feedback on plans to optimize existing email programs. In both instances, I was taken aback by complex webs of information presented as the recommended paths to improving the program performance.he recommendations in these plans were all familiar. From segmentation and personalization, to the use of rich media, to designing for mobile email, all the latest hot topics were supported with research and insights from reputable sources. So, while the plans focused on areas the industry has deemed important -- as measured by the number of words written on these …